Today’s consumers can go from thinking “I want to buy X” to actually holding the item in their hand in a matter of hours. “We live in an Amazon world,” Bill Farquharson, founder of The Sales Vault, says. “Clients look at LinkedIn profiles and websites to determine if they are going to reply to a rep’s attempts to make contact. They want to see five stars. They are doing their homework in the same way they would if they were buying a new refrigerator.” These new customer practices flip the script for those in print sales — but technology is on their side, too. Even after a sale, the “Amazon world” has another impact: Print buyers may expect their order to arrive quickly and to have access to information about their order at their fingertips, whenever they want it. “They want things automated, they want on-demand printing, they want fast turns, they want real-time tracking,” Dana Catanese, director of enterprise growth at West Chester, Pennsylvania-based Anro, says.

Few technologies have transformed print production quite like inkjet, and Mayo Clinic’s in-plant shows just how dramatic the impact can be. “We used to have three production machines that ran our secure print work, two shifts a day. It took us all day and all night to produce the statements on those three devices,” recalls Bret Johnson, manager of the Print Production Unit at Mayo Clinic, in Rochester, MN. Then his 49-employee in-plant added a continuous-feed inkjet press in 2021 and everything changed. "Now we do that in about six hours … on the night shift,” he says — freeing the day shift to work on other projects that bring value to the world-renowned medical center

Heeter, a full-service provider of secure print, direct mail, and fulfillment solutions, announced that it acquired Laurel Print & Graphics of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The combined company broadens its offerings in large format print and signage, which couples well with one of the largest assortments of commercial print and digital solutions in the Mid-Atlantic region. Scott Heeter, CEO of Heeter, said “Laurel’s leadership, skilled team and capabilities in large format print and signage are excellent additions to Heeter’s capabilities. This acquisition allows both companies to offer customers a broader portfolio of services to meet their marketing and sales needs.” Keith Jones, president of Laurel, commented, “We’ve enjoyed a strong business partnership with Heeter for many years. As we look to the future, it made sense to join forces to better serve our client base with an extended set of products.”